Secrets and Realizations
by Nala-Nay
Summary: Nala doesn't leave Simba alone after their argument. Instead, she runs after him and tells him what has been happening in the Pridelands and he tells her why he can't go back. Rafiki makes his appearance as well.


A/N: Hey guys! Nala-Nay here again. So I decided to write a one-shot about our favorite lion and lioness, Simba and Nala. This is set after Can You Feel The Love Tonight, when Simba says to Nala "Forget it!" and she says "Fine!" and he walks away. Well here, she runs after him.

Note: lol in here, Nala refers to the hyenas as 'mutts' such as dog, but if you look hyenas up or watch Animal Planet, you'll find that hyenas are really in the cat family 0.e!

Disclaimer: I just own the one-shot.

**Secrets and Realizations**

"**You think you can show up and tell me how to live my life? You don't even know what I've been through." The golden lion turned away from his best friend in huff. How dare she bring up how he should live his life. He had been living Hakuna Matata for a long while now and he wasn't about to change just because somebody from his past told him to do so. A terrible thing had happened to him in his past and he thought it be better if no one knew about it, especially Nala.**

"**I would if you just tell me." He heard the creamy tan lioness call behind him, but he didn't want to turn back. He was just too upset with her.**

"**Forget it!" He called back to her over his shoulder.**

"**Fine!" Thinking she had left well enough alone, we walked into a clearing, wanting to literally clear his head. Then he heard a rustle and he looked behind him and immediately turned back around to face the opposite direction.**

"**No. Not 'fine'. Simba you need to talk to me." She pleaded with him.**

"**I've said what I had to say Nala. Leave it alone."**

"**Nala, please!"**

"**No! Simba, I haven't seen you in four years and now you're telling me to leave you alone? Not a chance." Simba turned to look his best friend in the eye to study her facial features. She was showing true signs of concern and her eyes were looking a little watery. **

"**Nala," he seemed to be stuck on what to say without being an ass, but yet still try to keep here and keep her calm, "you really wouldn't understand."**

"**Then help me understand. Tell me why you can't or won't go back. I'm not leaving until you until you do." **_She's so stubborn_**! He thought to himself. How would she react to him after he told her, if he told her, what had really happened? Would she ever speak to him again? Accuse him even worse than what he has already don't to himself?**

"**I really can't tell yo-"**

"**You can't or you won't?" he cut him off hotly. This pissed him off.**

"**You can't make me tell you anything!"**

"**You know, you said to me 'you don't know what I've been through', well you don't know what **_I've___**been through." Nala's best friend rolled his eyes in arrogant disbelief.**

"**Oh please. What **_you've _**been through? It couldn't possibly top what I've had to deal with."**

"**You wanna bet?" Deciding to challenge this girl, he tested her by naming all the things she had that he didn't.**

"**Let's see…you still live at Pride Rock with our mothers and the pride, you have a king, you get to eat regular food, protection…should I go on?" The aqua eyed lioness looked at her friend in disgust, but then quickly changed her façade and looked away.**

"**Yeah, you would think that seeing as how that's the way it was when you left." He grew confused at her words. What was she talking about? The Pride Lands were almost just like this place, except there weren't many prides or prey animal.**

"**What do you mean 'that's how it use to be'?" He had come up beside her the way her did earlier before she told him she had missed him. When she told him earlier that Scar had let the hyenas into the lands, he thought for sure that she was lying and it was just a way to get him to come home.**

"**Simba, you," her voice cracked and she bent her head down, "life is not the same. Our home is not the same place that we grew up in."**

"**How is it different?" His voice was calm when he enquired that she tell him more.**

"**It's a desolate- wait. If I tell you what I've been through, you have to tell me what is going on in the head of yours." **_Well that sob story ended quickly. _**Simba thought again. But knowing that he himself was a fair lion, he complied,**

"**Alright, Nala. I'll tell you, but you really aren't going to like it." She sniffed a little.**

"**It is that bad, Simba?"**

"**Hey, you first."**

"**I could turn this around, you know."**

"**And how's that?" He teased her.**

"**I asked you first to tell me what's wrong." She countered.**

"**Well I asked you second, but if you want to get technical and seeing the gentleman that I am, Ladies First." The creamy lioness's mouth dropped ever so slightly, but as quick as it did, another counter thought occurred,**

"**Age before beauty." Simba, now baffled, looked away in defeat.**

"**Touche`"**

"**If it's any consolation though," he brought his head back to her, "you won't like, or may not, even believe what I have to say. Scar is a horrible leader as I told before. The hyenas-"**

"**You really are serious about them."**

"**Simba, I'd never lie to you. Yes, they are everywhere and everything is dead. If I go back without help, he'll-" She had stopped in the middle of her sentence, wondering or not if she should tell me more about Scar.**

"**He'll, what?" Nala turned to look her lifelong friend in his scarlet orbs with tears in her eyes that she is trying her best to hold back.**

"**I'll be forced to-"**

"**force to…"**

"**To be queen, Simba! And I refuse!" Her words, she cried now and it made him immobile. Was his uncle really that bad? Surely not. But seeing how upset his friend was, this is something was indeed true. But why would Scar pick her? Well, duh! Simba ridiculed himself inwardly. **_She's beautiful, strong, smart, perfect in every-_

"**No." Simba's breathless word was due to the realization that just hit him, "he wants you to have his heir?" Nala nodded her head, tears wetting the soil beneath her, nourishing the ground. He wrapped his arms around her, providing her a comfort zone.**

"**He has made pass after pass and every time I decline. He has a lioness there that is devoted to him in every way, but yet he still comes after me!" Her anger was showing through now as was his. Scar is older enough to be the girl's father and he wanted her be queen? "You should see the way he treats us lionesses, Simba. Nothing is fair and we have been forced to over hunt to feed his mutts."**

"**I don't believe this." The lion was shocked to all belief, "so what happens if you guys don't bring back a kill?"**

"**He takes it out on his three favorite lionesses," her voice was just dripping with sarcasm, she pulled away from him a little and Simba eyed her, "me, my mother, and your mom." This increased the golden brown lion's anger and he backed away, roared to the skies and started his pacing.**

"**Please tell me you're lying!" She shook her head, "this can't be happening!"**

"**Please stop pacing, you're making me nervous." She told him carefully and stopped and looked at her, and then continued walking back and forth again.**

"**I'm sorry, Nala, but I can't help it."**

"**PLEASE!" Her abruptness made him stop and glance her way, "he does that all that time before he attacks me! DON"T DO THAT!"**

"**Nala, you know I would NEVER hurt you." He approached her carefully.**

"**I know that, Simba, but please, it's a memory I've grown to know and I don't like it."**

"**I'm sorry." He hugged her again and she collapsed into him, allowing him to embrace her. After a few moments,**

"**I guess it's my turn huh?" Nala brought her head up from his mane and locked eyes with him and smiled,**

"**Yes it is." Letting his friend go slowly, he signed heavily.**

"**Alright. I left home because I did something terrible." He made contact with ground, trying to put his words together. "I don't know how you are going to take this, but I will tell you. If you leave, it's fine. If you choose not to speak to me, I'll underst-"**

"**Just tell me." She stated to him softly, he looked straight ahead and he finally came out with it.**

"**I killed my father." **_What? How is that possible! _**This and many other questions were flowing around in her head, but one seemed to be the right one to ask.**

"**How?"**

"**The stampede you mentioned…"**

"**Mmm hmm…"**

"**That was my fault. When dad came to get me, he got me out of the fray, but fell back in." Giant and hot tears ran down Simba's face from the mind-movie that was playing in his head, "my father's death was my fault. That's why I can't go back."**

"**You were only a cub and he loved you. He died saving you."**

"**No! If I hadn't been in the gorge, he would still be here!" His voice trembled and quavered. He had never told anyone, not even Timon and Pumbaa, and he had been with them since he left Pride Rock. Nala came up behind him now and rubbed his back.**

"**Shh, Simba. Breathe." He took in a deep shaky breath and sobbed quietly.**

"**I look pathetic don't I?"**

"**No. You look hurt. All these years of holding that in, it had to come out sooner or later." Her kind words made him love her even more from even the time they spent together earlier. She had become very wise within these past years, but it made her more alluring.**

"**I loved my dad, Nala, and I killed him." He said calmly to her.**

"**I don't get it though." Nala sounded puzzled.**

"**Don't get what?"**

"**Let me ask you this, why were you in the gorge in the first place?" Simba thought for a moment and then answered her.**

"**I was waiting for a surprise from my father."**

"**That's strange."**

"**Why?"**

"**Why would your father tell you to go to a place that he told everyone was off limits?"**

"**Well," he though again, this was indeed a strange ordeal, but then he remembered, "Scar told me to wait down there for him." Nala's eyes widened.**

"**Scar told you?"**

"**Yes." Nala shook head as of trying to unconfused herself.**

"**This just doesn't make sense, Simba."**

"**How so?" Simba's curious tone made Nala continue on,**

"**Simba. Scar tells you to go to the gorge-"**

"**He took me there himself."**

"**Ok, he **_took _**you there, tells you to wait for a surprise from your father, in a forbidden area?" The red maned lion nodded his head in response, but only some of this was sinking in.**

"**So?"**

"**Come on, Simba! This doesn't sound-"**

"**Fishy?" Simba and Nala turned to their left and saw a grey baboon standing there with a staff.**

"**Rafiki? What are you doing here?" **

"**Hello, Nala. I am ere to help you convince your friend to go back home."**

"**Dasiki,"**

"**Ra-fi-ki." Nala corrected him.**

"**Ok, Rafiki, Dashiki, Bikini, whatever your name is, I'm not going back."**

"**Simba!" Shouted his companion.**

"**Nala I can't!" He retorted smugly.**

**"You tink ya fadda would be proud of you right now?"**

"**Pshh. Who are you to tell me what to do? You probably don't even know my father." He began to walk away from the monkey and the lioness.**

"**How da-" Rafiki covered Nala's mouth and spoke,**

"**I sure do and I know who you are. You are Mufasa's boy!" Stopping dead in his tracks, the young lion whipped back around and starred at the baboon.**

"**Wha-how-"**

"**I show him to you. Rafiki knows deh way!" And just like that, Rafiki took off towards and Acacia grove. Simba came up beside Nala,**

"**Should we, follow him?" Nala didn't respond though, she just got up and trotted in the direction Rafiki had gone in and disappeared into the trees. Simba deciding he had nothing to lose, followed steadily and found the two looking into a pool of water.**

"**Look down dere." Rafiki commanded the lion and he did as he was told.**

"**It's just his reflection, Rafiki." Nala stated. The shaman then put his hand on the back of Simba's mane and pushed his head a little closer to the water.**

"**Look harder." The water started to ripple and wave and the golden lion's eyebrows furred. **_What is going on? _**Then a face began to form.**

"**You see," the face becoming more apparent and Simba's eyes grew wider, "he lives in you.**

**After the 'conversation' with his father, Simba began to think about what he must do.**

"**That was…something." Nala mentioned while sitting down. Mufasa had faded away back into the clouds which were now a star filled sky.**

"**Yeah. I know what I have to do."**

"**Do ya now?" Simba rolled his eyes**_**. **__Was this monkey going to make a habit of popping up whenever he felt like it? _

"**Yes. I'm going back." **

"**Really, Simba!" The young lioness was beaming with joy. Was he really going to go back?**

"**Yes, Nala I am. I have to face my past. I've been running from it for so long."**

**THWACK!**

"**OW! Jeez! What was that for!"**

"**She told me to." Rafiki ratted Nala out and she laughed, but Simba glared.**

"**Why did you tell him to do that?" Simba asked irritated.**

"**Because, it's about time you got some sense knocked into you. Besides, it's in the past now." She mused.**

"**Yeah, but it still hurts. You just love to inflict pain upon others don't you?" He smirked at her.**

"**You're still mad because I whooped your tail earlier?" Simba just looked away at her thinking it wasn't a big deal, "honey, you have got to get over that."**

"**You wait until we get back to Pride Rock. You're in for it." He faced her now and put on a challenging face.**

"**Oh, I'm so scared." She got in his face now and they were only an inch apart.**

"**Hmm…" The baboon, being as crafty as he is, pushed their heads together, causing both of their eyes to widen, but then immediately closed them.**

"**Get use to that." Simba said to Nala as he pulled away.**

"**Why?" She was smiling. She knew what he meant by that, but she wanted to hear him say it.**

"**Well you are going to be queen after all." He got up and started in the direction of the jungle, wanting to inform Timon and Pumbaa of his destiny.**

"**Was that your proposal?" Nala ran after him, both of them completely forgetting about Rafiki.**

"**Of course not. That was an indication." He had answered her arrogantly and when she caught up to him, she batted his arm.**

"**Rude," she laughed though, " what if I decline?" Simba then gave her a '**yeah, right' **look and then continued walking in front of her,**

"**Then you're stuck with Scar." He heard her gasp,**

"**I accept!"**

_A/N: So how was this one-shot? It popped into my head a few weeks ago and I finally wrote it down lol. Some serious parts, so comic relief, etc. _

_I'll be updating my next chapter here in a bit, so be on the look out!_

_~Nala-Nay~_


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